aramis ⚜ rené d'herblay (needlework) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2015-03-18 02:14:00 |
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He probably should have known it was coming, but somehow it had managed to sneak up on him.
Aramis knew, of course, that the anniversary was fast approaching. He always knew. The date was one that would never leave his head. Not after what had happened in Savoy. Not after all that he had seen. But somehow it had slipped away from him. Between this new world and Porthos and everything else, he'd forgot to think about it on any sort of conscious level. But just because he wasn't thinking about it didn't mean it wasn't there on the edges. Savoy was always there.
He was sleeping, curled up against Porthos's side with his head on his lover's chest and an arm draped over him. It was like any other night, until suddenly it wasn't. Maybe it was the cold of the night or simply the nearness of the date. Aramis could hardly say. He never knew when these moments would come, his sleep - or worse, his waking hours - invaded by the memories he had tried so hard to push aside. It had never worked, of course. He remembered all of it, every blood soaked detail, with a crisp sort of clarity that would likely never fade.
It was cold, colder maybe for the way he had lost his jacket in the chaos. Snow covered the ground, the white of it colored liberally with blood and strewn with bodies. Bodies of his friends and comrades. Marsac was long gone, and that betrayal cut deeper even than his wounds and his grief. His head hurt fiercely as he stumbled through the woods, a makeshift bandage soaked with blood and obscuring his vision. All around him were bodies. So many men dead. So many. He felt sick at the sight. It was supposed to be a training exercise. None of them had been prepared for this. They had never stood a chance and Aramis was still unsure how he had survived.
It was worse now than it had ever been before. In previous years, he had just had the guilt and the ghosts of Savoy, if that could ever be just anything. Now, though, there was another weight, different but equal to the pain he felt at the memory of the massacre.
The gun went off and then he was on the floor with Marsac in his arms. His friend had been dead for years. It had just taken his body this long to catch up. Still, it ached to lose this last piece of the man he had been before that day in the woods of Savoy. He clinged to Marsac, holding tight to his body and shaking with grief and loss and the pain of what this death represented. He had done what he needed to do, and he would do it again, but it didn't ease the overwhelming guilt.
His mind tormented him with Savoy and Marsac and he slept restlessly until he finally sat up with a gasp that was more a choked breath than anything, mind still caught up in the images that had haunted his sleep. He didn't look over at Porthos, not wanting to risk waking him, just sat there staring blankly ahead and shaking with cold and memories.